Like the novel on which it is based, The Lord of the Rings is the story of an epic struggle between the Dark Lord Sauron of Mordor, the primary villain of the work, and an alliance of heroes who join forces to save the world from falling under his shadow.

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The serial was originally broadcast from 8 March to 30 August 1981 on BBC Radio 4 on Sundays from 12 Noon to 12:30pm. Each episode was repeated on the following Wednesday from 10:30pm to 11:00pm. The first broadcast of Episode 2 was blacked out across a large part of southeast England because of a transmitter failure (a very rare occurrence even then).

The series was also broadcast in Canada on CBC AM in the summer of 1982. In the US it was on NPR with a new synopsis preceding each episode, narrated by Tammy Grimes. It was also aired in Australia.

A soundtrack album featuring a completely re-recorded and in some cases expanded, suite of Stephen Oliver's music was released in 1981.

The 26-part series was subsequently edited into 13 hour-long episodes broadcast from 17 July to 9 October 1982, restoring some dialogue originally cut for timing (since each hour-long episode is actually around 57 minutes, as opposed to 54 minutes for two half-hour episodes with overlaps and extra credits removed), rearranging some scenes for dramatic impact and adding linking narration and music cues. Even so, a small amount of material was also lost, notably a minute long scene featuring Gandalf and Pippin on Shadowfax discussing the beacon fires of Gondor. This material was not restored to the 2002 re-edited CD version.

The re-edited version was released on both cassette tape and CD sets which also included the soundtrack album (noticeably taken from a vinyl copy). Incidentally, episode 8 of the series, The Voice of Saruman was labelled as The Voice of Sauron on the cassette & CD box sets.

The script by Brian Sibley and Michael Bakewell attempts to be as faithful as possible to the original novel, but there are some errors and alterations. They include:

At one point, Minas Anor and Minas Tirith are referred to as though they were separate cities, but Minas Anor is actually the original name for Minas Tirith. This was when Gandalf and Pippin were discussing the palantír whilst en route to Minas Tirith.

The radio serial omits the sequence in the book in which the hobbits visit Tom Bombadil. This sequence was also excised from Ralph Bakshi's 1978 animated adaptation and Peter Jackson film version. It was omitted by Jackson as he claimed it contributed nothing to the long-range narrative of the story. However, the scene was dramatised, in a similar style but with different actors, in a later series of Tolkien radio adaptations by Sibley entitled The Adventures of Tom Bombadil (a title otherwise only loosely connected with the book of the same name).

This version omitted the original episode divisions, and included a new opening and closing narration for the first two sets, and an opening narration only for the last, written by Sibley and performed by Ian Holm as Frodo Baggins - Frodo's narrations deal with his efforts to write his historical account of the War of the Ring in the Red Book, as well as his own personal reflections and musings on the story's events.

The re-edited version also included some additional music cues, which had to be taken from the soundtrack album because the original master tapes for the series music had been lost.

The soundtrack, now digitally remastered, was also included with The Return of the King set, with a demo of John Le Mesurier singing Bilbo's Last Song included as a bonus track.